Castleville and Social Media Cheats. And other social media DOHs!

Castleville and Social Media Cheats

How to build a Castle and Kingdom

Levels 9 to 20: Part Two

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by Stan Faryna

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You say you want more reach and audience? Really?!

(Castleville Players can skip on down to the next section)

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It is estimated that 500 Million human beings play Facebook Games. Castleville, Farmville, Backyard Monsters, etc. Five minutes ago, I noticed that 6,713,710 people like Castleville. The likes seem to be ticking up by the million every week. I have 500 new Facebook friend requests in my Facebook add list because of my last blog post about Castleville.

Did I mention that I wrote it last week?!

Give people something that they want. Give it to them right now when they want it!

And, maybe, they will also discover you have interesting things to say.

Oh – did I mention that there ain’t twenty million or more… people and bots blogging and tweeting about Facebook games. Blogs about Facebook games are more likely to give meaningful answers – unlike all that kitsch that is pumped out for subjects like blogging, social media, seo, online marketing, and small-time online entrepreneurship?

Castleville: Of Castles and Kingdoms…

If you want to maximize your satisfaction and you didn’t read Part One of my level nine to twenty Castleville guide, read those Castleville cheats first and come back here to Part Two, when you are done reading Part One. Ok?

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Click to see the full size image.

I know! It looks so small for a kingdom.

The image of my Castleville kingdom above is a compilation of six full screen images reduced to a 600 x 600 representation of the glory of my magical Castleville Kingdom.

3. Shop – you can’t shop from the store when you’re visiting other kingdoms

4. Accept and dismiss visitors and gripe about those crazy tree-chopping tourists

5. Make a magical world of your own or hire someone to do it for you.

6. Attempt to make your character wear clothes meant for characters of the opposite sex

7. Pretend to be of the opposite sex even though your Facebook profile shouts out otherwise.

Note: Points 6 and 7 are jokes – I think.

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Did I miss something?

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Your Kingdom: The DOs and DON’Ts

Assuming you’ve just started your Castleville game, you’re lucky. Because I’m going to show you how to layout your new kingdom to maximize your game from levels nine to twelve.

Before that, however, let me give you some of the obvious do’s and don’ts.

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Castleville DON’Ts

1. DON’T sell the pond, roots, or plant life.

People will visit your kingdom – if you have these things. There will also be quests that require the things these objects give you.

2. DON’T scatter your royal buildings.

Build royal buildings together or as close to each other as possible – and two at a time. If you make people go looking for them, crew members may not tend them. Because they didn’t notice that royal building off their screen – especially on the top left corner and that far left corner.

3. DON’T block a character’s path at every turn.

Don’t build fences and walls in a way that a visitor’s character has to run all around the kingdom from one building to the next. That goes for buildings too.

It sucks when you have to wait five minutes for a character to do errands in a kingdom.

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Castleville DOs

1. DO make a hospitality suite.

A hospitality suite is where you place high-visitor-payout buildings (Isadora’s wagon, Sonja’s hut, gingerbread residences, ice farmhouses, pumpkin houses, etc.) together so that your visitor can make some coin on their visit to your kingdom.

2. DO place your kitchens, workshops, and studios together.

Place your kitchens, workshops, and studios together – if you plan on asking your friends to accelerate them. It makes it easier for them to find.

3. DO place trees and other disposable decorations, smartly.

Place trees and other disposable decorations (that you want to keep as decorations) away from objects that get clicks (Mining and Lumber Camps, Hospitality Buildings, Pond, Kitchens, Workshops, Studios, Great Hall, etc.).

It’s easy to misclick on an object. Don’t plant trees in front of buildings that get clicked.

4. DO make a Playground

A playground is marked by several signs with the downward green arrow. Place trees and rocks in the Playground for tourists hell bent on a mission of destruction. [wink]

7. BE selective in who you accept as a crew member of a royal building.

The tendings of your royal buildings are key to raising your castle points. If you are a daily player, you really want your royal buildings tended at least every other day.

Therefore, be very careful when clicking the accept button in your inbox. Really!

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Kingdom Layout: Get it right from the start

Level 10

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Click the image to see a bigger image

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Pictured above, Tim’s kingdom at Level 10.

1. The area around Sonja’s hut is circled. I circled it to illuminate Tim’s clever strategy to get to all the NPC quest characters as soon as possible.

After exploring the gloom to find Alastair, the next NPC to get to is Sonja. Get to Sonja as soon as you can. Getting there by level 10 is exceptionally clever.

2. Observe here also how Tim uses the pond and river to irrigate his farm plots. This accelerates the time of crop production.

3. You might notice that Tim is packing those buildings close together. He’s got limited space right not and he’s making the most efficient use of that space so he could unlock the gloomed areas on his path to Sonja.

4. Notice also how Tim is building two of each royal building as they become unlocked to him.

5. What you can’t see is that Tim used his crowns to unlock peacocks and geese. It will take days of feeding and treats for them to mature as adults and provide the items he will need in just a few levels.

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Level 11

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Click the image to see a bigger image

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Pictured above, Tim’s Kingdom at Level 11.

1. I illuminated the area around the Throne Room to emphasize two things:

a. Tim is building royal buildings as fast as he can to get castle points to explore more demanding gloomed areas.

b. Tim is also exploring his way to Isadora’s wagon. It’s tempting to unlock other gloomed areas in order to have more space for your kingdom’s layout, but you’ll lose precious time in doing so.

Phaedrah Ellison is a wonderful example of the kind of Castleville friends you need in the game: people who visit daily and people who contribute their insight to a player’s group.

3. Notice how Tim is adding water pumps around the farm plots. He’s doing that to further accelerate crop production time.

If you see a player with a smart layout like this so early in the game, build your relationship with them. Message them. Say, hello.

Level 12

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Click the image to see a bigger image

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Pictured above, Tim’s kingdom at Level 12

1. I illuminated the area around Isadora’s wagon. Isadora is the next Quest NPC to find after Sonja. Tim worked hard to get here so fast!

2. Note that Tim has several buildings to complete. He’s about to hit the wall of achievement.

3. Tim needs more chickens and cows.

Things are going to slow down real fast if he doesn’t UP his friend count up to 200. He also isn’t putting the hours into the game that he needs to grow his kingdom as fast as he is hoping to.

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Level 15

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Click the image to see a bigger image

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Pictured above, Tim’s kingdom at Level 15

1. As Tim didn’t send me enough screen shots to show his entire kingdom, I can just tell you that he finally unlocked much of the gloomed areas that were easy to unlock earlier on, but they were gloomed areas that he didn’t unlock because he was going for the Quest NPCs.

2. Finally, Tim is decorating. He’s making a magical kingdom. It was clever to hold off until now. But I would have recommended he hold for a few more levels. I know, however, that it’s hard to wait! [grin]

3. Tim hit the wall. He’s struggling in the game. He’s still at 50 friends or so he tells me. And he just can’t do much by logging into the game once every other day for an hour.

People that started the game about the same time that Tim did… are now ten levels past him. Of course, they are logging in to Castleville three to six times per day for 30 minute to one hour sessions.

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It takes many to make a kingdom, magilicious

All you need is love…

Love is all you need!

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Feel free to throw your Facebook URL in the comments (below) to get some more Castleville friends.

Like this:

Please Add Me! Thank You! http://www.facebook.com/stan.faryna

Hint: Put your Facebook addy – not mine. [smile]

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Feel free to send a Facebook add request and Castleville invite to these awesome people too (click the name to go to their Facebook page):

BEFORE you send an add request, send a message to the person that explains your interest in being a Castleville friend.

Send them something like this:

Hi, I would like to be your friend in Castleville. Please accept my add request. As soon as you do, I’ll send you the in-game invite. Thank you!

Otherwise, people will just think you are some random Facebook stalker. Or worse, an insurance guy!

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Castleville Tricks, Cheats, and Wisdom

This is what you really came here for. I know…

Animals

1. Animals mature faster next to water. A waterpump and trough does the trick in a fenced- in pen.

2. Unlock the peacocks and geese with your crowns and grow them as fast as you can.

3. You don’t need mature pigs until after Level 15.

4. Make sure you have at least ten of each animal by Level 15.

5. You can never have enough chickens and cows. Almost.

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Royal Buildings

1. Avoid confusion and hard feelings by inviting people that you know and trust to crew and tend your royal buildings.

Send them a message that you’ve sent them an invite. They’ll be delighted.

2. If you can build one kind of royal building, you can and should build two of that kind of royal building, right away.

3. If you have slackers on the crew, you can sell the royal building and rebuild it.

4. Send a personal message thanking your crew every now and then. They’ll be more conscientious about tending your royal buildings.

5. Send crew members energy as a free gift – every day if possible. They’ll really appreciate you!

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Other Buildings

1. You need a tailor to craft things to build a Throne Room.

2. You don’t need more than one craft support building of the same type (i.e., tailor, blacksmith, etc).

3. Building three workshops as soon as you can is highly advisable.

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Energy

1. Use all the +1 energy in your inventory before you log out. Your inventory won’t hold more than 15 +1 energy and new gifts of +1 energy will be lost if your inventory is full on your next log-in.

2. Make energy-rich food every time you log-in.

3. Leave 10 farm plots empty when you log-out so that you can grow grapes when you log-in. It takes 5 minutes or less for grapes to produce from seed. And those 10 harvested grapes become a +3 energy energy drink when crafted in your kitchen.

4. Don’t use energy to chop wood, mine stone, collect honey, gather ogre’s belch, pick berries, or fetch water in your kingdom. Go to an abandoned kingdom on your neighbor/friend menu and get everything you need!

3. Most of the time, you get 2 reputations for every royal building you tend in a friend’s kingdom.

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Coin and Crowns

1. Cash

$100 for 75,000 coins is ridiculous. You can make 100,000 coin in about four hours.

$100 for 1,000 crowns (wisely used) is all you need to enjoy the game. But you can enjoy the game without purchasing crowns.

2. Every coin counts. Don’t throw away coins on decorations until you have a clear idea about how you want to create a magical scene in your kingdom.

3. Every coin counts. Sell sellable items in your inventory before they overflow. Sell objects that you will never use in your decorations. Grow cash crops like potatoes.

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Miscellaneous

1. Use Flaming Grog to repair your favorite chopped trees. It works on tree stumps too.

2. Go to abandoned kingdoms on your neighbor menu to collect your wood and stone – instead of buying new trees and stones.

3. Don’t try too hard to make your kingdom the way you want it to be… until Level 25.

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Awww!

1. Plant flowers around Alastair’s house and butter flies will fly around your kingdom.

2. Place the Maypole on castle pavement, brick, etc. and birds will fly around your kingdom.

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Zynga Player Advocates

Castleville has lots of bugs. Quests may not appear or they’ll break down in mid quest. Energy that your friends send to you as gifts will go missing. Rewards may go missing. You may not be able to log in to the game. Things like that happen all the time to us.

File an issue report. You’ll have to deal with Zynga’s Player Advocates. Some rock. Some suck!

Angelo sucks. Angelo lies. There are countless stories about Angelo floating around the Facebook groups for Castleville players. Do not panic – if you get Angelo.

Just tell Angelo that you’ve heard all about his alliance with the evil sorcerer and that you’d like another Customer Player Advocate ASAP.

That goes for the other bad apples – Von Ernest, Mark Kelvin, etc.

Lilian and Anne Gennell rocked it for me.

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More of my favorite bloggers (continued)

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Feedback

If you think that this blog post sucks, let me know in your comment and don’t forget to include a link to YOUR favorite blog post.

If you think this blog post rocks, tell me why it rocks in the comment. “Awesome,””Great post,” etc. works for me. Don’t forget to include a link to YOUR most recent blog post.

IF this post helped you or it could help someone you know, please share it on your Facebook wall by using the following message (copy and paste it – if you like):

I can’t believe the amount of work you put into this! I’m really amazed!

I NEVER saw the value of gaming because I’d never given it a chance. Now, even though I don’t have any extra time to devote to it (yeah, I’m one of those “losers”who signed up, started playing and selfishly disappeared! LOL!), I can say that it is SO different than what I thought it was.

It’s mentally challenging, and actually a fulfilling social activity if that’s your thing.

I learned a bit about people and how aware they are of social skills, compassion and empathy as I played.

It’s also a great way to gather friends who might croos the gaming line to be an avid blog reader, etc.

You never know!

Thanks for your patience and all the other players’ patience, too. (pass it on for me!)

Hopefully, you didn’t sign on to crew an expensive royal building. Otherwise, you may have set someone back 20 or more real world hours of coin collection in order to tear that building down and rebuild. [grin]

You didn’t know that when you walked away from the game.

But, yeah, I have to tear down a tower or two because of you. [grin]

It happens. [shrug] I forgive you. [smile]

On the other hand, if you didn’t delete your account, smart players are scavenging your abandoned kingdom for logs and stone as needed.

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about in terms of all the hating on Facebook game-related wall spam. And I hate it as much as the next user. I do try to keep the game spam to a minimum and, yeah, my game suffers for it.

It’s easy for you and I to joke around about the games, who plays them, and why. It’s easy to be annoyed by the wall spam. But just the Facebook game industry is valuating at 100s of billions of dollars. And Facebook games represent a significant force in Facebook’s own financial valuation. If Facebook games died, tomorrow or sometime this year, that slip would have certain impact on the US economy.

In other words, some banks would falter. More than a few venture capitalists would be crushed. And the pain would trickle down. That’s trickle down economics for you! [laughing]

I took 6 screenshots (Top left and right, middle left and right, and bottom left and right. Of course, I made sure to have overlap. Then I just put them together in photoshop in separate layers. Like pieces of a puzzle. The overlap helped me to align objects.

Love the blog Very useful.
Although i am not having issues with castleville my husband is. Seems he can’t get Sonja unlocked and he did the quests for her weird. Going to have to contact Zynga i guess.
But two thumbs up on the blog :)

Great advice in both your posts on Castleville. In particular I enjoyed the four tricks you listed in the last article. I’ve nearly quit playing castleville several times because it takes way too much time to visit kingdoms. I’ve got about a hundred people on my castleville list. I’m not sure where you find the time to visit 200.

Your statistics on fb gamers and games in the reply were very interesting. But I think the most valuable thing I took away from this was your first paragraphs on the beginning of this article. Give someone what they want and need and they might discover you have interesting things to say.

Since I just started my own blog last week that is timely information for me. I knew it already, really I did, but to see the results so candidly listed above will leave a lasting impression with me. Probably because it applies to something I’ve done for the last twenty years. Gaming. Yet it brings it into something I’m completly new to. Blogging.

I will accept friends if they are over 21 and game requests too though I can’t promise to visit every single one every day. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000284480019 If that link doesn’t work my name is Elisabeth Tilton, spelled with an S not a Z. Last I looked I was the only one on there with that name.

Thanks for this post, timely indeed :) I will be looking at some of your other posts in the future. Think you hooked me.

[…] my game guides about Facebook Games got 100k+ readers every time I write them: Backyard Monsters, Castleville, etc. And I didn’t have to trick anyone into the read. Those game guides are what they […]